Airplane pilots, automobile racers, enthusiasts, and “garners” have found that simulation systems can provide a safe way to experience situations and can develop or improve certain driving skills, for example, in drifting, hitting brakes, on wet tracks, in different terrains, with loss of control, rollovers, and collisions and can improve reflexes while driving.
Such simulations are required for drivers, driving schools, and for simple entertainment. Thus it is necessary to provide affordable mechanisms for training centers, driving schools, and even companies in entertainment, arcades, or parks.
Controllers (steering wheels, joysticks, and other customized input devices for games), 3D displays, and acceleration simulators are prevalent among electronic devices and games. The industry of motion-acceleration simulators is growing fast, but their high cost forces enthusiasts to create their own “home-made” simulators, which cannot compete with commercial systems.
Driving simulators have their origin in flight simulators where the forerunners in the virtual reality of the industry created the first motion simulator 3-axis (rotation in x, y, and z displacement) and without audiovisual devices simply to instruct their students with sensations similar to actual flights.
A range of motion-acceleration simulators was created and used in World War II, but only in the 60s were computers used with audio-visuals for the motion experience.
Only in the 80s did automobile simulators begin to enter the market with the development of the HYSIM (Highway Driving Simulator), a fixed base simulator that served to improve the perception of traffic control devices.
From that time on, evolution continued and the models of today are plentiful. They can be classified in two categories: the freedom graded-level, and the operator position in terms of motion-driven axes.
Simulator models include: fixed base simulators; vibration-based; rotables; trays; robotic cages; and spherical simulators.